


iii. After the game, the king and pawn go into the same box

by Anusaya



Series: kāmaguṇa [3]
Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-20
Updated: 2011-10-20
Packaged: 2017-10-24 19:31:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/267039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anusaya/pseuds/Anusaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The conclusion of the plot began in part ii of this series. 6996 and 1896. WARNINGS FOR ACTUALLY FAIRLY EXPLICIT SEX, for once. Also, this is supposed to have more, including an actual threesome, but I've yet to finish it. However, it can still read as functionally complete here (by which I mean the series as a whole).</p>
            </blockquote>





	iii. After the game, the king and pawn go into the same box

**Author's Note:**

> Title is taken from an Italian proverb.
> 
> ?_? Plot is always a tricky beast, leaving one's self open for holes to be poked into your logic, etc. But here's my experimental attempt at a semi-mafia storyline. Someday, if I do the sequel/conclusion/etc. of this timeline, it will progress to even more gritty territory.

It is the morning of the first mission apart from the other Guardians.

Chrome slinks down the street like a pet cat gone astray, through a district of Lombardy where striped awnings reach overhead from shops of croissants and deli meats and wines, where tourists pile against one another on the sidewalks and boys and girls give chase, and service workers look down from hotel windows at the stream of coming and going humans, among which there is the one curiously young Japanese female. Chrome has, by now, acclimatized to being alone in and of itself. It scarcely perturbs her, but this is not Namimori, and the language spoken by the natives of this country is not her language. The syllables trouble her, and the conjugations: _il participio presente, passato remote_ , and what if she should confuse her words at an inopportune moment? Mukuro rests in her mind, eternally unperturbed and unwilling to be bothered to wakefulness in the morning.

A sign advertising _Crêpes & Coffee_: Chrome turns, trundles beyond the glass door (today, she is wearing tennis shoes with checkered knee socks), meeting with a whiff of cigarette smoke and the scent of coffee beans and the sound of Italian dialects and tourists and working people speaking in English, too; Chrome recognizes the hard New York accent. The voices, the smells, are a congregation of Otherness. Restaurants always feel like congregations of Otherness; unconnected lives passing each other briefly on the way to disparate destinations.

She walks to the counter. Stares at the menu beyond.

Yamamoto Takeshi, she thinks briefly, works in a restaurant with his father. Sushi. A family business. And Chrome has eaten there before, with the other Guardians, although she was quick to remove herself once the meal had finished. Gokudera Hayato smells of coffee beans and cigarette smoke and sometimes Chrome has heard him, in snatches of conversation, speak in an Italian dialect, too. This side of the world is theirs, isn't it? Perhaps she should think as they would think. How are those two faring on their own mission? She wonders, fleetingly.

In Italy, the crêpe becomes _crespella;_ five minutes after ordering and sitting with her hands clasped together at one of the tables, Chrome is handed a plate of -- well, crespella, with a filling of chocolate, strawberries, and banana, as well as caffè latte with a dash of cream foam. She looks down. Fumbles in her kitten-adorned purse for the money (drops it, momentarily, and she is aggravatingly conscious of perhaps holding up other customers), and Mukuro says, _They got your order wrong._

In fact, she does not like bananas.

 _No more than you care for pineapples, I seem to recall,_ he muses.

_Oh. Yes._

It is not surprising when he chooses to speak to her anymore, even if it emerges from what had previously apparently been a silence not so unlike sleep. With that man, it is difficult to tell when he is watching sometimes.

Her hands are already outstretched.

_Are you going to accept that?_

A faint dizzy feeling, as if hit with an epiphany, and a moment later, Chrome stutters in perfect Italian (which she does not actually know, but somehow the words drop into her throat as if lowered, temporarily, by a cord): "I think you have my order wrong."

She leaves the shop with strawberry and chocolate crêpes with a splash of rum and her latte, smiling a little at nothing in particular for a moment before her attention turns to the dress shops, fabrics and lace and measuring tape and scissors and so many mannequins looking back at her with smooth constructed eyes, unseeing, and blank bodies and hands resting eternally upon hips over legs which look nothing like her own. She thinks of boudoirs of dreaming girls in European cities, libraries filled with classics and calls for dinners and ice cream parties every night, a life nourished on crêpes, and she crushes the thought. Looks down at her feet, where one sock is drooping.

It's a little strange, having a purse filled with money.

 _Change compared to what you will soon have,_ Mukuro notes. _But preferable to the salary which you and Ken and Chikusa were eating on before, I should think._

Which would be to say: No salary to speak of.

_You are happy to see me purchase food, Mukuro-sama?_

There is a long, almost disbelieving pause.

_Such questions. What use is to be had in a starving body?_

Afterwards, he disappears once more. This is all right, as Chrome is still growing accustomed to navigating these strange roads, and the voice within her head can become a distraction at times. Mukuro is not always forthcoming; he is as distant as he is near, and flits between the two in an instant. It's that solitude again. That idle contemplation of the tinkling of change in her purse and the economical value of being able to buy for one's self, for a girl who used to never leave her house unsupervised, and who once took it for a given that her parents' money would always support her (perhaps, she supposes, it was this they hated her for). She can buy food, now. An epiphany? A small success, rather.

Hibari stares out the window of his hotel room with a conqueror's stare, and Chrome knocks gently, waits for him to turn (which he does, passingly), and lays the extra crêpe (its plate neatly covered in plastic) upon the bed.

He crosses the distance in three easy strides, peels the plastic away with a jerk, and asks, "What is this?"

"Um. I thought -- you might want one," Chrome tries.

"A fruit concoction for herbivores."

She does not know what to say to that, so she silently returns to her own room and takes her meal, watching the news briefly in the meanwhile. By the time she has glanced towards Hibari's room again, there are nothing save for crumbs on the paper plate, which has found its way into the trash.

The curtains are wide open. The sun of Lombardy cuts into the room like a spear, and when Hibari jerks his tie and tilts his head, the line of his neck is an angle so sharp it makes Chrome think of geometry at her old school: fearsome architecture, his face a study in the symmetrical planes of lips and nose and eyes like a storm off the Italian seas, roiling and dark. She stands, stark in the moment when the world forgets itself, fills with sudden warmth, as of the feeling when the hot gusts blow in from the sea; humid and unnatural to what you felt when walking across the cool coastal rocks ten seconds before.

"It's time. Let's go," he says.

Chrome nods.

~*~

Chrome is not nervous.

Not about the mission, rather. (The necessity of her interaction with human beings insofar as communication is concerned, however -- )

Perhaps, she thinks, nervousness would be an intelligent emotion, but the mission is moving slowly. It's not quite the instantaneous battle of guns, swords, box weapons, and explosives which she had been expecting. There seem to be numerous preliminary details, and while they are caught waiting for paperwork to clear and once she has performed a crude introduction in Italian for the Family with whom they are engaging in business, she escapes with care from the scene. Simply heads off to the restroom (which is an ornate affair with gilded faucets which run warm water even before one has thought to turn the knobs) and locks herself away in a stall. Pushes aside the inexplicable if instinctual fear that someone will break down the door. Breathes deeply. Pushes aside the room and her strung, trip-wire body, and incarnates a new space for herself so that she can release Mukuro.

The rules have gradually begun to change since first they met. Where before he always created a world for Chrome, now sometimes she invents a niche for him. She spreads the layout of the room out in her mind: Victorian, mahogany furniture and a canopied bed and a chair in which she sits, pose careful, and another chair over which Mukuro will discard some article of clothing, perhaps his jacket. His gloves, he will leave at her feet, after biting them from his fingers.

"The room is not finished," Mukuro chides. He breathes out these words, then inhales so visibly that one could almost believe she had truly freed him, as if he were tasting fresh air. "Your imagination has not sufficiently prepared the sheets."

She squirms a little and feels herself flush at the suggestion. What's difficult sometimes is not the bodily element, for she had so long thought of her anatomy as neuter that her teacher seeing it was not impossible, but this: the mental landscape. He recognizes, intimately, the contours of all that she desires, whether economic ends or boudoirs or crêpes or something besides all these, and she lowers her eyes a little to acquiesce. Paints red velvet across the bed.

"An improvement," he says, but she is embarrassed at the impracticality of the set-up.

There are some kinds of women, those whom Chrome reserves distant and alien admiration for (if this is what you would deem it -- perhaps it is more a creature curiously taking note of another species as it passes by), who are red velvet and mahogany. She is checkered socks and bright, stark pinks and blacks and purples and the occasional red, but no _hues;_ no blood rouge or apricot. She does not take those kinds of dares. Not in real life.

She has learned to kiss back by now, though he likes to lead, and she lets him: a hot, steady press, mouth to mouth, and she breathes in a murmur, sucking the air from between the two of them; (although really, there is no air; there is nothing between them, here), and she arches away from the chair, slightly, at the feel of a ringed knuckle pressed through the fabric of her panties. An electric sensation to her clit. Mukuro smiles against her jaw, kisses where the bones of her chin form a paper heart's V, _smiles_ as if he is a magician preparing a trick, and waits against her, cheek to cheek, as his finger curls inside of her. He drags the gasps from her and leans up to cover her mouth, so the air slides back into him again, and she fills with the steady, gradual burn. Dark and warm and relaxed; she feels herself throb, and he mimics the motion with a second finger. His other hand unclasps her bra.

Chrome does not alter the shape of her body in these moments; does not project a self which is in any way idealized. Mukuro has commended her for this, amid the ever-present punctuating reverberations of his laughter. (Others would be tempted, you know.) It's usually the same routine: a slow, almost artistic fingering of her breasts, trailed by lips, as if she is being explored. Combed. Hard, massaging pressure to her sides, to her neck, her back, gloves dropped at some point, and she mirrors as best she can, although rational thought (and her nerves) melt rapidly; dissolve and slide free. Once she is sighing and trembling and moulded like a sculpture, played like an instrument, all her tender places peaking beneath his hands -- once this is so, he drops down to his knees.

She slides off her panties.

At first, it was always her who did this, usually on _that couch,_ but again, the passing of time offers greater reciprocity. Mukuro wanted her to allow this, and she does, though she still shivers furiously.

"There's something on your mind today," he says softly, still smiling.

Her hands tangle themselves in his hair, fingernails digging through the curious whorl of which she has styled a copy.

"I--" Her bare feet begin to cross over one another.

Chrome's knees press together, and Mukuro pulls them apart; spreads her by the thighs as if she is a project he is sitting to work at (which perhaps is not so far from the truth) and begins the process: tongue pressing into her, fluttering over her clit. A brush of teeth, and she jerks, sighs and tightens, and her toes curl.

"Yes," she murmurs.

"Your other partner? Do you want him -- " His finger hooks inside of her, strokes something sensitive, and then a lap of tongue, and he lifts one hand to rub circles of her wetness against her belly. "-- to do this?"

"Um. I -- "

 _It's very difficult to speak with your head there, you know,_ she would say, if she could. He laughs as if he understands the thought, regardless, and flicks his tongue in a quick, rhythmic succession of motions, which has her swallowing hard; the sweat runs slick over her neck and chest, as if this is real, as if it's all so real, and the texture of him is rough and sweet and playful and demanding. Coaxing.

"Yes," she admits, after a minute more, and her thighs tremble, and he pinches the hood; pulls it up, and she can feel his breath and his whimsical chuckles and his pulse in his digits against her pulse, inside of her; the sweet _ache_ spreads up into her belly, where he is still rubbing tenderly (or possessively, of the organs he has created), and Chrome exhales, and those insides clench and spasm, and after a few moments more of his hair tickling so strangely against her inner thighs, she comes with a groan, hips jerking forward against his mouth, fingernails scraping Mukuro's scalp.

It is rare for her to scream during the first orgasm.

The first is always sweetly relaxing, as though her body is made of lace ribbons and his long fingers are untying her. Drifting on an ocean of sensation. Being undone.

And, when the shaking subsides a little, and her breaths are almost even: "Is it wrong?"

"Why should it be?"

"Because -- us."

"What of it?"

What of it. Chrome does not know how to reply. They have never given -- it -- an official name. A nebulous unity of two; he is not her sibling or her father or her titled spouse, though in a way, he does partake of all of these functions, and master and sensei, besides. But more specifically, Mukuro is her male half, and this is their routine, the game which they play together with their mingled bodies.

"And it is true that most teenage girls have begun to develop desires of their own, is it not? I should hope you realize -- "

Mukuro licks his lips and fingers, then taps Chrome's chest. Presses her back into the velvet which she has, for this occasion, invented, and she falls weightlessly, so that he is able to peel away his pants and lean over her. She opens easily, oversensitive and raw and stimulated; eye closing and wet enough now for it to be a glide, almost; that first, breath-stealing movement which eases him into her; that blunt, slick pressure of which she has come to be so fond. She pulls him down by his tie, by his hair and forearms and what she can reach, and their sweat pools as skin collides with skin, chest to chest and legs to legs.

"-- I should hope you realize, of course, that you are not the only human who -- _fascinates me,_ for that matter," Mukuro says, and kisses her. "Take what you want. Who you want. And I will do the same."

"Ah," she murmurs, and it is soft and low and prolonged, a sigh which transforms into a rough purr.

She tightens, experimentally, and reaches her hand down between them and kisses him in reply, and wraps her legs around his waist and squeezes, and at that, his breath catches slightly, and in that slow, back and forth current, she lets him fuck her to another orgasm, until his body locks and finishes in hers, and they are brow to brow, hairline to hairline, chimera-like: one body, unending, and Chrome closes her eye.

Focuses on the feel of him exiting, slipping out wetly. Focuses on sliding his shirt all the way up, so she can touch his heartbeat. Wonders if the skin which she has made for this occasion is as sensitive as her own.

"You taste," he breathes, voice thick, "like strawberry crêpes."

And pushes her hair away from her face with the back of one hand, a cooling touch.

~*~

"Five minutes," Hibari says, when Chrome emerges from the restroom.

He is standing in the lobby. His eyes cut through her, as ever, but she is cool, her gait a series of slow strides on the black pumps which she has worn for the occasion. For business, Chrome wears a suit, black dress skirt, and stockings only a shade darker than her fair complexion. It is nothing she would wear except for business occasions, and the niggling sense of the suit looking strange on her slim shoulders remains, but there is a part of her which feels mature like this. Womanly. And five minutes. That is not a bad transition to real time; when she enters the other world, she is always slightly concerned that the gap in time will be too long, that someone will get suspicious.

Chrome meets Hibari's gaze. Eye to eyes.

He looks down.

A moment of smugness, until --

\-- she notices a stray curl of toilet paper under the spike of one shoe.

Oh.

He turns away without so much as a demand for her to follow, and Chrome kicks her heel to the floor and flutters her hands, laces them behind her back, and chases after him wordlessly once he exits.

~*~

Someone shoots at them once they emerge from the taxi.

More than one person, Chrome has time to note, and Hibari grabs her aside so hard that she almost strikes the ground. She creates a fire wall in front of herself before she has thought to ask questions; Hibari says, "Phase one."

And lunges through the columns, Cloud flames aglow, white-purple, and something disconnects; chains and points and a circular jerk which almost gives _her_ whiplash without so much as coming near Chrome's body, and the next thing she knows, there are screams and blood and harsh cracking noises. Metallic screeches and the thud of bodies, and after a moment she turns, blearily, and notices another individual cocking a pistol in her direction. Three, actually. She swallows and neatly dumps them into a pit of hell. And then Chrome realizes she forgot to warn Hibari about the nature of her illusions, but well, he has already jumped through the lot of them and killed everyone. As Chrome is assessing the body pile (and there was rather a lot of blood and sound and her ears are ringing), she feels a hand on her wrist.

Looks up to see that gaze pressing down on the Vongola ring of Mist.

"That was his attack." He indicates, with a look, the now-closed portion of road into which Chrome has recently dumped her own share of their opponents.

There is no question, of course, to whom the pronoun refers.

"It's -- " Steadies herself, and eases her hand away. " -- my attack."

The correction, if it can be called such, is for Chrome, more of a truism: I am the Guardian of Mist. The attack is my attack, no matter its origins.

"I despise illusions," he replies, but his voice is softer than usual, and he closes his eyes, briefly, then turns. Regards their surroundings. Their first (strangely quick) victory.

The thing about missions in the mafia, you see (as Reborn or anyone with more expert knowledge might inform a person, and as Chrome, by now, has learned), is that the goal itself is only a small part of what you are expected to achieve. The presumed end, in this case, would be to guard a Family, to therefore protect those in the Family's care, and to retrieve stolen weaponry. But it is not so straightforward: it is not always so easy to trace which alliance originates a feud; sometimes they hunt you before you can hunt them, upon gaining word of your presence, and this involves a considerable amount of being human target practice. And in order to retrieve stolen goods, intel is of course a necessity, and intel can take a while.

They search the bodies.

Both agree, with relative certainty, that the identification cards they find are fakes; it would be foolish to carry real names or proper social security numbers, but Hibari sends them back to the emerging Foundation, regardless. Even a wrong turn can leave an accidental bread trail towards accurate information.

~*~

"It's a bullet," Hibari says.

Chrome nods.

It's a bullet.

That's what they're here for. That's what the Moretti _Famiglia_ has been working on: it's a bullet, but not just any bullet. Oh, no. A bullet, rather, which will extinguish and absorb one's flames. A bullet, that is, which contains the ingredients of anti-matter which would tidily erase any substance which does not belong in this world, such as the corporality of illusions produced by Rokudō Mukuro, or by others.

A force of un-making.

It is the first time (but not the last -- no, certainly not the last) that Chrome has felt truly, honestly, almost _literally_ punched in the stomach due to her career affiliations.

The injuries suffered while battling Mammon or Glo Xinia or any opponent were of course unpleasant, but learning that your own Family's ally has given rise to the creation of an item which could nullify your powers, your life's source --

Chrome sits beside Hibari in the back of the limousine, fingers threading through one another as though she is folding paper cranes. Since the fight, his eyes have been as distant as ever, but not unkind.

It is not personal, she decides.

To extinguish Dying Will flames, the weapon’s other function, yes -- to absorb them, would harm many people, including her own Boss. It would perhaps not trouble Hibari unduly, but others could suffer besides herself. Besides Mukuro. Weaponry does not choose sides, and bullets are merely tools. She spares a glance at the man beside her; wonders if he has any idea what she is thinking, or whether he cares.

Chrome never learns the answer to this, but a moment thereafter, Hibari does speak, if only to say, "You will be the one to infiltrate."

"Infiltrate."

(Statement-question.)

"Small animals are not always weak," he adds, as the car moves into a tunnel, all darkness and rows of tiny orange lights flashing by. Beautiful Italy's crevices, its corners, its hidden places. "And if anyone tries to stand in your way, I will bite them to death."

 _I can't,_ she thinks, for a terrible moment. I can't. Don't ask it of me. I won't be able to.

"I will," she says.

~*~

This is the part Mukuro never assists Chrome on.

She has not yet decided whether she is grateful to be allotted space to work within or whether she wishes for his answers. It's maddening, sometimes, and she sits on her bed in the hotel room, still feeling as though all the wind has gone from her lungs. He trains her, he fucks her (whether to ease her tension or because it is some amusing way to pass the time; his answers change, depending on the day), he intervenes in her fights if he has cause to, but when it comes to information on the affairs of mafiosi, he is rarely forthcoming, although she suspects and has often suspected that he is a man with an answer or at least a hypothesis for every gap in knowledge. _Is it because of you?_ she wants to ask.

Is it because of you? Is it because of people like you? Is it because of illusionists?

Is it because of people like me?

Or is it just a system?

 _A game of cards,_ he'd said once.

Mukuro is holding all the cards.

 _Not all,_ he corrects.

~*~

He constructs a table for her, and a bottle of wine, and they sit across from one another, with Mukuro shuffling.

But Chrome does not know how to play.

"You are a card of mine, it's true. But I am a card of others as well. As is Kyouya."

Chrome does not disapprove of the strictly utilitarian definition. It disregards humanity to speak of them as such, but it doesn't bother her, somehow. They are, in a way, all being used -- by one another or by other forces, but if the human condition is to be a card in a deck, or perhaps more appropriately a cog in the machine, then Chrome would really only prefer not to grind the mechanisms to a stop. Make us win. Make it run smoothly.

"Of course, I selected you in part because you have this straightforward and agreeable approach. You do slide into place rather more easily than others, who trouble with questions and complaints. When one gets right down to it, the two of you simply act."

"I am not old enough to drink, Mukuro-sama."

He laughs. "Chrome. Everyone is old enough to drink in Europe. But never mind about such silly observations. Don't you have something to ask me?"

"I do," she says.

But she can't.

It isn't for her to ask.

"Then you understand, my dear."

She would have (if it were her place, which it is not) noted that he deems himself apart from social conventions, apart from the deck, apart from the other cogs. He is quick to say so, to Tsuna and the others, and she does not disbelieve him, and yet, in their private discourse, Mukuro is ever reminding her that _they_ are contracted, that he goes where she goes, and therefore, the question remains, were it properly framed: when you re-shuffle the cards such that you assume the position of servitude, what are you, in actuality, setting up for? What befalls the card of servitude when the deck begins to collapse? And is it your wish for it to do so?

"I -- I think they call that a bluff, Mukuro-sama."

He reveals his hand.

She reads: 10 8 6 9 6

"One pair?"

"Maybe two or three."

He seems oddly amused.

She has no idea what he means. Maybe her knowledge of poker hands is even worse than she has realized.

"Real illusions hidden with the illusions, I said once." He puts the cards away. "But suppose you could read my hand. Suppose all creatures could read one another's hands. Their eyes. Their hearts." _As I read yours,_ she almost hears. "Suppose you could in fact read my heart. Consider, Chrome. This is not a hypothetical I have mentioned to anyone else, but our bodies are shared. And thus you must, on occasion, be curious. But suppose indeed that you could read my every whim. The question remains: Would it matter? Would you be, now, in a place other than where you are? Doing other than what you do, at present?"

She considers, briefly.

"No."

"All the complications of six hells, but you are the only one with whom I could work so intimately who would not wonder at me at all. The only one who would not be puzzled, and who would not stand in awe or in horror.” The smile approaches fondness. “This, of course, is why I do so."

She is a part of him. A part of his goals. There is nothing to wonder at. Yes, life consists of a series of assignments. They do not come from him. They come from Boss. From Reborn. From higher-ups. From mafiosi. It's all pure action, which is where Chrome fares best. She's comfortable like this. Being assigned roles. Helping to get a job done. Not worrying overly about the intricacies involved behind the scenes. She does wonder, at times; she does, but not for long, because it is pointless, because there is no other life, and she is not turning back.

If there is to be found, in such relations, trust or emotions that run deeper still, then they are, to be certain, mere artifice around which is the biological and physiological core of their union: that is, symbiosis. He is her and she is him.

And yet Chrome, also, is herself.

An entity apart.

~*~

There is a bullet.

It was created by an ally of Vongola.

It was stolen by an enemy faction, or an alliance, the likes of which are still being assessed.

It is, at the moment, one of a kind, although after a series of tests, the product was to be reproduced _en masse_ (but only, of course, for trustworthy individuals).

"Correction," says the Ninth. "It's still to be reproduced, once found. The difficulty will be seeing that we retrieve it before anyone else begins making duplicates."

The bullet is in a gun in Europe.

It will soon be on the black market, if it's not already.

It's strange to be discussing this over dinner, but they are.

Dinner in a mansion with the Ninth Vongola; a dining room atop a winding, double-ended staircase which swells and caves and swells again above itself, like a pooling heart, a compressed organ, bloodless and breathless. The architecture is expressively Mediterranean, pointed arched entryways, crowned columns, a looming fireplace over which there hangs artwork in oils and acrylics of ancient, bloody battles; Roman ancestors of hallowed Italy, their sun-licked chestplates and blazing eyes. Crushed enemies underfoot. A statue of a woman playing a harpsichord. A legacy in art and destruction. One painting: fire and swords. The next: the Virgin Mary, holding the Christ child.

There are vases, as well, and potted plants far taller than Chrome. She navigates with the air of one who supposes the house will consume her. It does not breathe, but sits in wait, chandeliers and studio lights paving the dreamlike luminosity of white entryways and clawed chair feet. The windows are closed, the curtains drawn. She sits through soup and salads at a table with men of varying ages and makes. The Ninth, antique like the house itself, rarefied, somehow, and though this place must in the dark surely be a home to ghosts and the spirits of the murdered, filled with winding Gothic pathways befitting Walpole -- though the house has the air of artful death in its making, the owner himself smiles kindly, and engages in some debate with another elder over which other small and delicate female relation she most resembles. Oh, this young woman certainly does look like someone; but who is it, exactly? To place it? The child of a third cousin, once removed? The daughter of an heir of another Famiglia, who, upon last visit, was playing beside the fountains of her estate?

There is one younger couple in particular -- a man with dark Grecian curls and a woman with an elegant, old movie prettiness reminiscent of Natalie Wood -- whom Chrome discerns as the aggrieved Moretti heir and his wife, recently robbed of their Family's possession.

She looks up, at one moment, to observe a servant pouring her a glass of burgundy wine.

It trickles in a slow, hypnotizing stream, and Chrome remembers Mukuro's words.

Omits mention of the fact that she is fifteen.

"So, you," says the Moretti heir, with a firm, quintessentially male flick of the thumb and unclasping of one hirsute hand, "are the one for the job."

His wife pushes her plate forward, takes a drink of wine, and lights a cigarette. She blows the smoke to the side with practiced care.

"We are," Chrome answers.

She inclines her head towards her partner, not certain whether it would be appropriate to feel mildly horrified by the fact that Hibari's ennui with this social gathering has condensed into an emotion so tangible that he is all but oozing antipathy onto the table like a particularly insidious glacier, albeit one who occasionally answers in some curt manner. She is not entirely convinced that he will not proceed to launch his steak knife at one of the eyeballs in the vicinity.

Instead, he sits and cuts his meat with rather more than necessary effort before un-gritting his teeth long enough to consume it, piece by piece.

"Ah, yeah," the man continues. "Yeah. I like the cut of this boy's jib. Yours, too."

Chrome cannot tell whether he is being sincere.

"You have been prepped on everything, I take it? You know what you need to do?"

"Infiltrate," she answers.

"Yeah, well. There's a party tomorrow night. Officially, it's an inaugural party for the Minister of the Interior, but we have reason to think there will be people there who know things. We're told you have ways of getting information."

"Specifically," the Ninth adds, "that is, the identification information you've so far collected, though often scant, and, yes, replete with pseudonyms... has been connected to the following list of potential individuals, with whom the deceased were seen at various points."

He hands each of them copies of files. Names. Photographs.

"Be looking for any of them at the party," the man's wife says. It is the first time she has spoken in their direction. She taps the corner of one eye; winks suggestively in Chrome's direction. "I've been to a lot of these, though not in your exact shoes. Looking as though you fit in and socializing will be important. Though, I've gotta say -- " Puff of smoke from the end of her cigarette. "On that point, you kids seem a bit fucked."

"They're professionals," her husband says. "Kuron Oh Donkuro, right? With a special power. I was told. They're professionals."

"I have the utmost faith in Sawada Tsunayoshi's Guardians," says the Ninth, and wipes his mouth with his napkin.

Chrome takes a swig of her wine and almost gags and slightly wants to die a little.

Hibari is already out the door.

~*~

Upon returning to the hotel room, Chrome pulls out her laptop. Sits down with Hibari's assistance to begin a furious and not altogether timely search of every pertinent individual on the listings which they have been handed. Pictures. Background. Video clips. She has the germ of an idea in her mind, but they only have one day, and her potential option does seem more than slightly ludicrous even to her own reckoning.

Hibari curses about gatherings of herbivores. Chrome paces the outer balcony of the hotel room in the tiny shorts and tank top which comprise her undergarments, occasionally giving a rather intense scratch to her hair tuft. For all that she supposes she understands of what one is required to do in a situation like this, and what Reborn or any man of note in the mafia would be so inclined to do, Chrome finds herself wishing that she were accustomed to drinking, because the optimal solution would consist in no small part of inebriation. However, there is nary a bottle of wine or champagne in sight; the wind is chilly on her bare shoulders, the steps cold to her toes, but it helps her think.

At five in the morning, Chrome falls asleep on her stomach, with her face to her computer.

She wakes with a jolt at 10:26 am. Hibari is next to her, gazing at the ceiling with one arm beneath him, and for all possible innuendo of a young male and female in an enclosed space together in the luxury of Italy, the celibacy is somewhat crippling.

She adjusts her eye-patch.

"If your idea fails," he says. "I will have no choice but to bite them all to death."

"I know," she replies.

Rolls over and hugs the pillow and promptly drifts into another bout of sleep.

~*~

The event is an affair of black ties and dress gowns, hosted at a resort with three swimming pools and a ballroom of Old World charm. Valets tend to the arrival of limousines on the agonizingly long, oval-shaped driveway (in the green midst of which there is yet _another_ fountain), of which theirs is covered by Vongola's funding. Chrome passes as a silent spectre through these locations. It is curious to walk through wealth and luxury without in any respect being a member of the kind of society which such lofty halls are created for. Mukuro has hinted that perhaps someday she could be. She is still very young, and awkward-bodied. But for now, she feels more akin to a security guard on the outskirts, which is not far from the truth. Still, to attend properly, she wears a pale pink-orange cocktail dress with much frill exploding from the bell of its body and coiling straps of lace at the shoulders; her shoes are strappy silver heels on whose wedges she toddles with moderate care. Flower in the curl of hair over her ear, ribbon around her tuft, white satin eyepatch (because, of course, a black skull simply screams _mafiosi,_ or, at the least, a questionable character at such a party). She is quite obviously the youngest woman at the event, and her colour choices only emphasize the fact, but Chrome is pleased with her appearance, regardless.

Hibari, in proper suit and tie, looks handsome, and in between bouts of nervous thumb-twiddling anxiety about their actual purpose for being here, sitting in the back of the limousine with him and looking through the tinted windows at the smiling, swaying bodies on the drive and in the lawn, Chrome finds herself occasionally, _occasionally_ being lured by the seduction of the night, its faulty promise of glamour. She could almost believe that she is here to be lovely and dance, that her presence is more than a ruse; a cosmic joke of sorts. These are the kinds of fantasies and fancies which she is quick to dismiss as girlish nonsense; but, looking on that great shining lawn where the water rises like a crystal spray beneath the starlight, it is easy to question, for what reason does she protect this beautiful world to whom she does not belong? Its arms could open to her, perhaps, but for now, she is removed, and if she's being honest with herself, she is not certain she wants this to change.

She has ever remained aloof because she has ever sensed a smudge, a grease smear of corruption and deceit amid the lands of the gorgeous. Call it a bias from her unfortunate childhood, perhaps.

Her partner mirrors her in distance from their surroundings, though perhaps for different reasons.

Chrome is not accustomed to feeling a purely carnal attraction to someone as strong as she feels with him at times. With Mukuro, of course, it is dissimilar, because they were everything else before, and thus the bodily element, while a source of enjoyment for her, adopts a kind of superfluousness. Attraction only for the sake of attraction is new. Odd.

And, for now, thoroughly irrelevant.

Someone opens the car door.

Chrome exits on unsteady steps, feeling her way about like a creature newborn.

As she is straightening the ruffles of her dress, she feels a touch to her elbow and looks up.

"Hibari-san," she says.

He surprises her when he replies, "You find it tedious, also."

A note of grudging respect.

Discussing how tedious a thing is seems tedious in and of itself, so Chrome declines to comment further. Arm in arm, looking nothing like the picture of the happy couple (Hibari scanning the area in all directions, Chrome smiling lopsidedly and continuing to mess with the hem of her dress), they enter the building.

Within the first thirty minutes of the party, Chrome has circled the perimeter, hobbled across the dance floor, trekked by the restrooms, up the stairs, on the balconies, and ten minutes she spends carefully standing beside the white-clothed tables of punch fountains, Italian cakes, pastries, and _hors d'œuvre,_ gingerly picking at a plate of crackers topped with some radish and cream cheese combination which proves, along with the cold cuts and vinigrette seasonings, surprisingly appealing to her palette. A charming forty-something woman engages her in a discussion while seeming intensely certain that the girl at the snack table is a Japanese diplomat's daughter (for so was the story provided by the higher-ups for her entrance, should it be questioned), and Chrome smiles and listens and does not disabuse her of these beliefs.

Meanwhile, her eye is on the party-goers.

She counts among them twelve of the men depicted in the files given.

Sidles close and catches what stray fragments of conversation she can.

"That one, I think," Chrome says when she catches her partner on the balcony.

Luciano Cariati, member of the Cariati Family, attended college in America. He thereafter spent some years in the states pursuing journalism during the day, and, by nights, nursing alcoholism, as well as a continual sense of inferiority in the face of his elder brother. Other hobbies have included avoiding child support to his estranged wife when possible, and sometimes arranging for minor hits and exchanges of contraband in the name of his organization. Overall, a rather low-ranking and common tier of mafiosi.

Once Chrome makes the call, they wait.

They wait, that is, until Mister Cariati has indulged in the first round of this evening's particular bout of alcoholism, at which point he makes his way into the men's room. Hibari follows. Chrome waits discreetly outside.

"It's done," Hibari says when he emerges.

Mister Cariati, in point of fact, will not be returning from the toilet -- or consciousness -- within the next two hours. At least.

Curiously enough, however, despite being thoroughly and entirely _not_ awake, the man can be seen a moment thereafter walking forth from the bathroom, straightening his tie, clearing his throat, his slight limp from a previous gunshot wound oddly exaggerated, as is his nervous tick of checking his watch -- which, when any eyes turn in that direction, he does no less than three times in one minute.

"I don't know if I'm doing all right," Chrome whispers.

She suddenly almost wishes Mukuro had taught her to possess bodies, ethical considerations be damned. Puppeting an illusion is an exercise in self-doubt.

Cariati née Chrome (or perhaps Chrome née Cariati, depending on perspective) makes his way to a handful of male associates, a table of suits, and sits down. The dinner conversation is, at present, sports. The latest Super Bowl, then the World Cup, then a foray into cars, then some impassioned monologues about the importance of _Family_ and how this country and all of rotting Europe, indeed, is forgetting _Family,_ and Chrome rather suspects the speaker has had his fair share of the wine bottle's contents, as he continuously repeats a few lines of rhetoric about how you have to pick up and "deal with it" -- which, altogether, make little sense beyond a call to pathos, yet receive a few thoughtful nods from the other seated individuals. The illusionary man has absolutely nothing to say about the Super Bowl, so he settles for timing his nods along with the others, and coughing out an occasional reply. Chrome did her background research, but how was she to foresee the _Super Bowl?_ She was hoping to fake conversational abilities better as someone else.

"What's the matter with you, cousin?" asks one man.

Chrome is, of course, near enough to hear. Sitting at the next table by herself, back turned, steadily examining the list of the guest speakers.

She fishes, mentally. The trouble is: how to turn the conversation in such a way so as to get the information she needs? She is no tactician.

"I --" Cough. "Nothing in this world is the matter, cousin. I was just thinking about how there's... there's so much going on tonight, you know. You know?"

"You talking about the auction?"

Sweat beads on her neck.

"The auction? Yeah, yeah. I'm talking about..."

"Eh, don't be too loud."

"Right. Sorry."

"That Voodoo stuff."

"--Yeah?"

"Dunno why Vongola would let in a thing like that."

"That weapon?"

"No. What's the matter with you? That _thing."_

"Oh." Chrome thinks. Her doll grunts. "Oh. Yeah."

"Iemitsu's -- yeah, well. Crazy. It goes against God. I'll tell you -- bad sign when you have to start creating new gadgets just in case you have to kill it someday."

She drops the schedule.

Her hands shake, as does her focus. She grabs the paper again, forcing herself to swallow down any other thoughts before her already-tenuous illusion should accidentally dissipate.

"That... yeah, that's a bad sign."

"Don't want nothing to do with all that mess, personally. With all that."

"It'll bring a fortune, though?"

A try. She is grasping for straws.

"Uh-huh, and the wealth will trickle down, 'coz. I aim to enjoy it. Yes, I do." (It's awkward, how she has to intermittently turn her chair a little or glance at the wall mirror to make sure the illusion is not accidentally knocking over any glasses of water.) "As it's not me who shall be doing the buying."

"And if I wanted to go watch?"

"And if?"

Chrome pinches the bridge of her nose.

The trickiest part, now.

"Just -- the place. The address. What was it, again--?"

A grunt from the other man. "Don't tell me you forgot, 'coz."

"Well."

"What's the matter with you? Kind of a --"

"I lost the scrap I wrote it on."

"--big deal. Eh, were you in the wine again?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess I was."

Silence.

"Anyway -- "

The man takes a drink of his ice water.

Chrome turns to see him produce a notepad and write something. Tears it in half and hands it, folded, to his companion. Her eye goes wide. She picks up her things and departs from the other table, small and unnoticed. Luciano Cariati, thereafter, feels a curious need to remove himself from his companions and leave in the direction of the restroom once more, and after her illusion has walked near her in passing (away, mercifully, from the crowd, and closer to the corner, and, with hope, distanced from the scrutinizing eyes of the party guests). The paper slips into her open hand. She looks in both directions. Frantic. Reads.

Hibari, she sees, is approaching her, and the entire room seems to fill with a dizzying buzz, as if sonics are pulsing from within her eardrums.

"I have it," she says, quietly. "I have -- "

His hand connects with her wrist, and the first gunshot parts the sounds of conversation, slices them into screams.

Chrome opens her mouth, feels her partner's hand over it, and then they are on the ground.

"At the front."

Hibari nods in the direction he references. Chrome sees a blur of motion, of scarlet and aquamarine and pearls and diamond earrings and suits and soft, styled hair, and contorted faces -- because someone, somewhere, has opened fire, and the guests scatter like so many hens.

"Someone is opening a box weapon."

Chrome looks up at him. He is crouched on one knee, breathing steadily, his face a sculpture of a battle-readiness so thorough it could almost be called placid. Chrome opens her little hands so that he may read, and, for a moment, he does. Then nods.

 _They're onto us._ She does not have to say it. No words need to be spoken. They know. They know.

"Go," Hibari says. "The back door."

What tipped them off? Chrome does not know. Does not have time to ask. The tonfas blast into lilac fires, and one partner lunges in one direction, while the other runs (trips, and stumbles, and then pauses to unstrap her sandals) towards some back exit, which is made slightly complicated by the fact that she has no precise idea of where the back exits are, or what they look like, or, indeed, if they exist, although it seems probable that such a resort would have multiple ways out. A fire escape on the second floor grabs her notice, and she flees out onto it. Fresh air hits her face and neck and chest in a gust.

There is, many times, something about a breath of air which clears the brain and triggers the body into a heightened awareness of itself.

Chrome stands barefoot, knees knocking together, sandals dangling from one hand. She is not quite to the point of gasping, but there is a hoarseness to her throat, a pain to her chest; her breath is irregular, and her heart is loud, and the night is huge, October-weathered, empty but for the wails of traffic; wheels and sirens and horns, and the rattling of the fire escape's metal bars. In her other hand, she clutches the address so hard that her short nails bite into her palm. Brush of teeth over her lower lip.

 _I am the Guardian of Mist._ She reaches for the railing. Along the way, she thinks better of keeping her shoes and instead unceremoniously tosses them to the alley below. Chrome grips carefully and runs as fast as she dares down the steps, each footfall landing primarily on the balls of her feet. _I am the Guardian of Mist._

And they could be around this end, too. Ready to destroy her.

The thought occurs to her that she has no wish to die in Europe, so far away from home.

Without Boss even seeing or knowing.

(Imagine ending in the trash in an alley like this.)

She shakes her head. Flowers, ribbons, fall to the ground.

_I am the Guardian of Mist._

Once at the road, she hails a cab and hands the driver the address.

She notices him giving her a cursory examination in the rear view mirror.

Realizes, uncomfortably, that he must think she is running from a situation of distress, perhaps a date gone horribly awry or a dangerous back alley meeting. Or perhaps, the shifting expression seems to say -- perhaps nothing so drastic. Perhaps simply a girl who got a little too carried away at a party. Had a little too much to drink. Happens sometimes with foreigners and kids from the states in the Old World. Spain. Italy. France. Those countries don't sleep. This kid must be used to curfews.

But not so much as a word, and the car speeds off.

Chrome closes her eye -- alone now, completely.

~*~

In the end, it's a warehouse.

Large, square, silver-topped and faintly glowing, phosphorous-like, beneath the moon and the stars. There are rows of windows, rectangles comprised of tiny squares into which the natural light of the Italian sky trickles down. Chrome stands at the wooden door which is taller, by more than a foot, than she is. Leans on her tiptoes to peer inside. No use. She sees only outlines: rows and columns of shelves. Crate after crate of inventory. Spectral lights dipping from the ceiling; high-slung bulbs and slow-turning fans and the sense, utter and absolute, of a forbidden world, where few should be, let alone a barefoot girl. It's not so unlike the gymnasium, she thinks. Not so unlike the first stretch of mile she walked with Ken and Chikusa before. Not so different, but her allies had been there, then, and she had not yet been chastened by the awareness of what she was getting into, and she had lost, first, and then later had almost been sliced unto death.

Animal panic takes hold. Like drowning. Should have waited for Hibari. Should not have gone alone. She can't go in there.

Who goes into a room of criminals, dangerous men, at under five feet and wearing an orange cocktail dress?

"And yet -- "

She cries out, more akin to a shrill, breathy gasp than a shriek proper.

"-- the greatest hitman in Italy stands rather shorter than you, you realize."

"Mukuro-sama."

Chrome clutches her chest. The body, of course, is not one she recognizes. A nondescript man (they are, often) with a coat and a hat and an aggressively casual, hip-slung posture.

"-- did you know already? About this place?"

"You flatter me, Chrome. It was your trail I followed. A lovely dress selection, by the way. Pity about the shoes."

"I -- thank you, Mukuro-sama. Should I... should I... um."

"Ah, yes. You are going to enter the building, are you not?"

The moon catches on the half of his face not shadowed by the brim of the hat. Mukuro's smirk sharpens, and _that_ expression Chrome would recognize anywhere, on any body. She sucks in a breath.

"I thought I should wait."

"I fear this would not be prudent. You are here to catch a bullet before its replication by your enemies, correct? You have traced it to this location, but for how long shall it remain here, I wonder? Kyouya -- " He shrugs extravagantly. "-- is otherwise occupied on another merry rampage of death and destruction, and upon his arrival, I do believe the occupants will scatter. The entire building is likely to combust into timber, with or without your target still being inside. Therefore, you have only one logical conclusion."

He walks past her, reaches, and gives the door a tug.

Chrome steps forward, and, a second later, feels his breath on the back of her neck. His hands on her shoulders. His mouth next to her ear, a smile warming against her skin. "There remains the necessity of taking the bullet from the haystack, so to speak. I have a plan, but it requires more bodies, you see. So I need you -- " Fingers trailing over her throat. Against her hairline. Chrome shivers. "--to distract them, in the meanwhile."

"I'm nervous."

"You'll be fine." He kisses the place where her spine joins her neck to her shoulders. "Trust that the world's underestimation of you will be your greatest secret strength, my Chrome."

She does not even have a gun. Materializing the trident would not be out of the question, should it come to that, but. Chrome shakes her head. Pulls the door on its hinges.

Must and stale, listless air; lazy fans and lazy lighting and the permeation of cigar smoke. It calls to mind a shipping yard, and indeed, this is where no shortage of the crates shall depart to and from. Chrome walked into Melone Base at the end of the world. Here too she can go. Sawdust speckles her ankles. _An auction,_ they had said, but she sees no indication that there is any such event in progress; she must have missed it, then, or else it is an auction styled differently than what she would imagine. An auction, but there is no single man who stands before all others. No crystal-lined revelatory _Aha!_ of a moment wherein her target is presented, pristine upon a velvet pillow. There are tables and there are boxes and there are men. There are men walking around and men sitting -- men smoking and men talking and men dealing. And there are guns. Guns on tables. Guns in piles. Guns in holsters. Guns, undoubtedly, in the various boxes.

And enough accompanying powder that the warehouse must be a veritable keg.

She notices, then, surprised looks in her direction, but Chrome never stops moving, never misses a beat; creeping, automaton-like, butterfly-bright in a room of greys and browns and blacks. Spot of tattered prom colour from the life she departed, incongruously manifesting into that life which exists now. Drifting, a ghost ship on a dry ocean. Drifting, until she has reached one table and pulled up a chair. Her eye closes half-way.

And they come.

Flashes of the aural: radiowave distortions, white noise. Wobbling, water-blurred visions. _Drowning. Drowning_. They arrive like the psychokinetic panorama of a mystery horror film, forces playing tricks in the temporal lobe, warping one's tenuous grasp of reality, and Chrome tastes numbers, hears colours, feels fragments of pertinent conversation since this mission began. It coalesces. Savage kaleidoscope. She drops her hands to the table. Aloud, says,

"I want to play."

The man sitting nearest to her on her right laughs and points a gun at her skull. Chrome catches a contemptuous cloud of cigar smoke, puffed into her eye. It waters.

She does not move.

"Poker. Blackjack. Any, I guess."

"Your mother isn't here -- " Someone farther down. Shuffling of cards. Lick of the lips. "How'd you find this place?"

She straightens. "Business."

"You've gotta be kidding. First babies. Now -- "

"Could be serious. Yeah, remember. The babies."

One man leans forward. Nudges a pack of cards in Chrome's direction. "What say you shuffle, darling?"

She grasps the deck.

(Give Mukuro-sama time.)

"Chinese mafia, right?"

"Japanese," she corrects.

"They do like the girls young there. Maybe -- " Another smoke cloud into her face, and Chrome blinks it away. Begins her hand motions. "-- you're the merchandise?"

Chrome's shuffle is simple, casual, inelegant. One hand beside and over another. Cards amid thumb, index, and forefinger, and she jerks the two halves of the deck together, thrusting in card after card after card. Mukuro's fingers, longer than her own, used to -- before Chrome's eye -- perform weaves and riffles and strip shuffles. He could make the cards dance when he so chose. They might stand for him, wave on his fingertips. Chrome does not shuffle from memory. Not from her own memory of the sight of those hands, rather; it is perhaps _another_ form of memory. As if those motions had belonged to her body, though they never have.

She does not even know how to shuffle.

(She is shuffling.)

Fragments as she deals:

"You do kung-fu, too? On top of being mafia?"

"Maybe she does." One man mimes a chopping motion, and everyone else laughs. "Or it's like one of those horror movies. Crawling out of a well in the middle of the night and coming here. What do you say?"

More seriously:

"I think she is the merchandise. I think so."

"-- school girl fetish, they say -- "

"Sick culture, making whores of girls this young."

"Different with Asian women, though. They love to do anything you tell them to. Not like girls from the West."

"It's a cultural thing. They don't like their own men. Can't really blame a guy for giving them what they want. "

"Let's see under that patch. Me sucky sucky? Say it. Come on."

Chrome spreads the cards; flips them, deals them. Tilts her chin upwards and pretends to regard the items on the table with cool detachment. Frail indifference. But within, as she distributes cards, she is counting, checking, formulating lists: the neat little pile of assorted odds and ends (paper money and golden coins and gem-laden rings; idle rings of wedding-blessed fingers, or insignia-crested rings of _Famiglia_ or Hell Rings -- guns and clips and bullets). Stolen, every one. Here is tonight's inventory. Here is what's on the line. Is her charge a metallic eye amongst its brethren? Out of the corner of her own eye, she scans the room. The darkness beneath the sickly lights. Vague movements. Indecipherable bodies. And she must await the signal.

The cards are cool. Weightless. But powerful-feeling. Graceful inked hearts and spades. As she begins to dispense the deck, the focus at the table shifts for a moment. Hypnosis-like is the thump of card to table, card to table, so that bodies move and collect and hold and blow their smoke and pour (then drink) their wine.

There is, she thinks oddly, almost a sensuality in the flutter and tap of paper.

Almost an excited, anticipatory shiver at the back of one's neck.

This is gambling.

And she never thought she could be the one to feel this way.

Cards are put in the center. Money is raised. Someone makes a joke about strip poker. (When you lose, the clothes are coming off, but for now.) Her presence does not cease being a joke, but the cards distract, and she is the last to bet. Chrome fingers her Mist Ring. She does not dare, even temporarily. Instead, she opens her purse. Drops the last of the cash which she has on hand for the evening -- which is to say, not much.

She looks down.

Off-suit 2, 7.

The _worst_ hand.

_(Flustered _at once_ at the realization that she, in point of fact, sucks. Fingers shaking.)_

On the flop (3 cards), another two.

On the turn (one card), a seven.

Narrowed eyes in her direction. She isn't, she realizes suddenly, being very poker-faced.

On the river (last chance for a good hand): a third seven.

Final hand: 2 2 7 7 7

Two folds.

"Full house," she says, softly, when the cards are shown.

A winning hand.

Three seats down, a man scratches his wrist against the crown of his head, cigar still in hand. "Not bad." He takes a deep drink. Ashes fall to the table. "Luck of the draw was with you. But you have to realize, of course, that you aren't walking away with anything."

Two seats from Chrome's right, another man laughs. "I agree. Let me do the honours."

The muzzle of a revolver stares her down. Faceless snout, elongated sable nose which will, with one rush of sound, obliterate her features, burst her opposite eye, tear apart the cartilage in her nose, lodge in her skull and dash her brains on the table. Maybe the dental work will be identified once the body is uncovered. Chrome drops her cards; she's already reaching to the aether for her trident because _she does not want to die,_ though let's not fool ourselves: at this range, he will not miss.

Then there's the shot.

~*~

You never scream.

You presume that there will be a scream before the final instant, but the efficiency of the lungs is not equivalent to the task of a bullet; decibels shatter the brain's awareness, rupture or threaten the eardrums -- alveoli fail, gasps suck down within themselves, vacuum-like, water spinning in a bath's drain. Pop goes the weasel. Pop goes you. You never have the frame of mind to scream. You are sitting, hunched, rigid, staring at the person beside you, whose brain has lately been revealed, skull opened to craterous capacity. A gaping, uneven hole; a smattering of blood thickened to spaghetti paste-and-chicken-leg fragmentary consistency with the addition of assorted human particles. Matted hair, flowering spray on the now-broken glasses of a bespectacled face. Or what remains thereof. It's not like in the movies. Death is wet. Death is messy. And in the last second, the hand which dealt death shifted, pressing that familiar muzzle to the back of the cranium of the one sitting closest to you. So down he goes. Noise, fire crackle, and smoke. An end pathetic in its unexpectedness. Died laughing.

And now there are other guns pulled. Everyone at the table. And exclamations of confusion, that a man should turn on his own. Only you sit quietly, already comprehending, and already feeling that winding cirrus current of amusement which is not your own but rather a force that boils up from within. You dim your eye and feel your fingers lengthening, your arterioles expanding, your joints stretching, your empty socket knitting tissues in its cavity and filling with vitreous humour.

 _You've done well, as always,_ Mukuro says. _Let me continue from here, hm?_

You lose yourself sometimes when you become him. You fall into a starless inner space; circuitous, infinite, visions of electricity magnified by water. It's all an illusion, or is it? These images you see -- are they the portrayals of your brain activity as it attempts to comprehend itself -- as it attempts to project itself into imagery which it can understand? You never know what it is you see or what these paths are. But they are, and you accept them. You accept that your hands are warm with leather, your trident held without the least misgiving, your shoulders firm, your chest a smooth plane, your throat ribbed with Adam's apple, your entire form unfurling in kinesis. And you know. You know, while your minds brush past one another, that no one in this room is a stranger. You know them all. You have followed their activities, their connections, their associations. Oh, yes. And retribution is the apex of satisfaction. A dish best served cold, they say, but you disagree. A dish best served warm and red. They could not truly have been so arrogant as to presume they would escape alive? (These names, these phrases, will slip from between your fingers as soon as you become only Chrome once more, but for now. For now, it is like dipping your feet into a pond and feeling a secret language in the water.)

"Rokudo Mukuro," someone acknowledges, startled, and you realize -- you realize that everyone knows you, this version of you. The other, the female, is anonymous unto the eyes of the mafia world. They have not yet learned to put two and two together. Small. Invisible.

It all makes sense. The clarity is astounding.

And so now is this clarity -- you are, at present, numerous bodies within the room.

Your fingers pull one, two, three, four triggers. Blast to worm food those in _your_ vicinity. Those who would have called these bodies allies, and the confusion, the horror; it's _beautiful,_ you see. So beautiful that you are laughing, full-throated mirth, even when the shells you have adopted break and burn and bleed with return fire from men who have no choice but to slaughter their own.

The chaos is exquisite, is it not?

"I thank you, mafiosi," your vocal chords say, with a resounding clap of leather-clad hands. "For giving me this opportunity."

(If not for their meddling, which required _you_ to be assigned to this mission -- if not for this, after all, how would you have been accorded the opportunity to open the tides to the sea of blood? The course always does run true, and you're smiling, smiling, smiling like the cat who has lured the mice to play.

It's rich. It's fucking _perfect._ )

And the lotuses bloom through columns of hellfire.

Men scatter and fight and burn and _die._

You let the blazes blow back, let the heat wash over you. Baptism.

Cleansing by flames. Purging everything away but the light of your eye.

Only.

Only, the other you --

The other you (you are ~~Chrome~~ ~~Mukuro~~ you) --

The other you points to the top of the crates, where a hitman is climbing (has climbed), and you, with your trident in hand, are an easy target, but you will simply erect a wall to catch the shot. Do not worry. Except. Except -- and suddenly, it occurs to you. Suddenly, you realize --

 

You drop.

~*~

It hurts to hit the floor.

Chrome lies, a crumpled flower; a discarded blossom, ｆａｉｎｔｌｙ cognizant.

It hurts to hit the floor when you are injured, bleeding, because the jostle and shake -- the disruption of stillness -- aggravates the nerves, upon which, if you are not careful, you might strike against the ground. She does not land on her broken bones, but it hurts, and she is panting with the exertion of maintaining a body through which .41 inches of lead (plus other alien substances) has recently passed.

.41 inches of lead propelled through the soft rondure of her shoulder, through cartilage, through muscle, through veins and arteries.

Chrome blinks. Thinks vaguely that the phrase _like a stuck pig_ applies to the viscous red run-off which has her limp arm slippery, her dress soaking, wine-like, already turning to the hues of rust. It's hard to pin-point, over the distracting flare of ache, from where it comes, only that it comes and comes, caking all in its path, and she --

And she drags a swallow.

Drags her good (if shaking) arm.

One final, straggling, acutely unnatural, pain-laden twist.

And she holds it.

Cups her target in her (girlishly little) palm.

Cups her target in the hand which looks as though it has played at surgery without medical gloves.

Her fingers are hospital-red．

She holds the force of her undoing．

She is unafraid, because in this second, she realizes she has succeeded.

(And now you become a pillar of salt.)

 

ah here it comes

ｔｈｅ　ｍｅｌｔ

ｉ　　ｎ　　ｇ

 

ｏｆ　ｏｒｇａｎｓ．

  


~*~

The minute hand crawls beyond five, bringing the circular face of the wall clock to 3:07 pm, Central European Time. Province of Lodi in the Po Valley, medieval square of Piazza della Vittoria, where the buildings run Romanesque in a dominion of arcades and cathedrals, beside the church of St. Francis, within which is buried Agostino Bassi, who, more than a century prior, discovered the connection between microorganisms and disease. In the hospital beside that place where Bassi lies in rest, the man who stands over his patient may well be the metaphorical heir to such research. She recognizes the perpetual five o'clock shadow, the lines beneath weary, smiling eyes, and demurs as one who has learned to be suspicious of a particular character is wont to do. His expression, in return, is not unkind as he adjusts the analgesic ketamine drip.

The reconstructive surgery on your shoulder has been successful, he explains. You will be in stitches for a time, and you will, in all probability, cling to your Vicodin prescription, and you will need to continue to see a doctor to ensure that the healing process is running smoothly, in all likelihood, and if the pain becomes too severe or something tears, do not hesitate to call. Here is my card. (She accepts with a blank stare). For now, rest a few more days, and you will be released. Wink. Head scratch.

"Thank you, Doctor Shamal," Chrome says, mouth full of dust.

His bedside manner is as pleasant as can be expected, but she has no desire to move or to effect any pretense of joy. She watches the birds outside of her window and counts the seconds as the bells of that ancient church chime with the hour. Chrome is informed that, in Japan, Tsuna and the others are doing well. She is told that they will be happy to hear from her again. Everyone will be gratified to realize that you have finished your mission successfully.

These words bring a sweet, small salve to her, and she is able to rest her head on the pillow without unnecessary stress. Boss knows she took an injury. A shoulder wound. No one has informed him that, on the way to the hospital, Chrome was hemorrhaging --bleeding herself out through her orifices. Funny to say it's not even an entirely uncommon feeling by this point. She pokes her plastic fork into her hospital food and eats it without grimacing. Tasteless. Her longing for Japan is as acute as the pain she has been given medication to suppress.

She wants nothing more than to see the smile of her boss.

It will make everything bearable, for a while. For a while.

"It really is a pity that boy doesn't have a sister," Dr. Shamal says, whistling amicably as he speaks with a nurse about the details of his patient's condition. It is nothing he has not said before of Hibari; that young man, he insists, is special indeed.

When he had found his partner in her death throes, he had (in an event not altogether unfamiliar to Chrome) singlehandedly supplemented the flames of her Mist Ring with that of Cloud, giving her the strength she needed to restructure her organs, and this while simultaneously fighting off the remaining _mafiosi_ in the vicinity.

The bullet that the two of them had been sent to retrieve in the first place was still grasped within Chrome's hand even once her consciousness abated.

Her fingers had become loose around it, but the item was there.

A near disaster. A near death. A bunch of _completely idiotic_ decisions you kids made (yes, his bluntness requires him to say so). Seriously, who doesn't ask for more assistance from the higher-ups or some kind of back-up when walking into a scenario like this; what kind of gods do you fancy yourselves as, exactly? -- but, hey, neither of you are dead, and the only actual injury has ended up being bloody and miserably sore, but not in any sense deadly. So, overall, pretty fucking good. Maybe even a little miraculous.

In the mafia, near deaths you learn to accept as cautionary tales, as lessons for what not to do next time, and as water under the bridge.

Chrome agrees that everything has turned out all right.

She scratches at the IV and knows it's a lie.

~*~

Chrome meets with Hibari on the banks of the River Adda, where the water reflects fir trees and sky. Her shoulder remains a mess of stitches, concealed by her high collar, and they walk in silence, in their shared longing for the glow of paper lanterns during the autumnal matsuri festival in Namimori's entertainment district, in their shared secret of what happened on one Italian night. The irony is vicious, for they are people who speak seldom, and somehow, their privacy has become enfolded in one another, perhaps quite against their will. Hibari alone knows the truth which Chrome will not disclose. Today, he is imperial in his suit, his hair windswept, his face somehow older. They do not pause to sit, but keep treading along the green beside the waterway.

"You sacrificed yourself for that man," he says, with a whiff of accusation.

"I exchanged my body for his," she agrees.

But the truth is, it would not have mattered. As an illusion, a figmentary being, Mukuro would have been vanquished from his physical existence in this body as soon as it was shot. Chrome had hoped to avoid damage altogether. If it had been the figure of his flesh which was penetrated, instead, would the wound have been fatal? To him or to her? Or even to both? She does not know. She hopes never to find out. It was mere luck, mere circumstance, that the bullet did not lodge in his heart or hers, that it passed only through her shoulder. Even so, she had felt its ingredients seeping through her blood stream, unraveling the interstices of the illusionary matter. With Hibari's assistance and her own power, she has for now managed to replace what she lost, but for one important detail.

The connection to Mukuro has been erased.

Among those who believe in the metaphysical, there is a claim that the sutratma, more commonly called the "silver cord," links the mortal skin to the ethereal body. From the silver cord, life flows in a synthesis which connects to the higher soul, the perfect self. With what wondrous threads had Mukuro woven her soul to his? And with what force has the world retaliated against his powers? This, she cannot forgive. Logically, she may do so, but her condition now rebels like the myth from Plato's _Symposium_ : when humans were composed of two beings, back to back, and the gods, in their jealousy, saw to their severing.

It's almost funny, but she has no intention of laughing.

"He used you for an in," Hibari notes, dryly. "To exact his revenge against the mafia, or part of it."

And the words are bitter. In a partnered mission, the suggestion rests: he used them both.

"Alternatively." Chrome clears her throat. "Mukuro-sama risked his life to assist us."

Her counter-implication: She does not question her agency, and certainly not Hibari's.

"And you actually think that was his intention?"

"I didn't . . . speak of intention. I don't know." Which is not untrue. She knows his thoughts, but only those which he chooses to divulge freely, and there is an ever present awareness that Mukuro hides what he sees fit, even from her. "But he did. Help us."

Her partner grunts, unwilling to either debate further or acquiesce.

Chrome is fine with this.

Hidden within illusions are real illusions. From real illusions emerge illusions. Lies hidden within the truth. Truth hidden within the lies.

They helped him. He helped them. He used them. The mafia uses him. A paradox.

It is what it is.

The warehouse was levelled. Thoroughly destroyed, its contents exploded or lost or exposed and returned to their proper owners. The mafia in this province is, if not in shambles, then managing one hell of a bloody nose. Mukuro's slaughter had been swift, efficient, precise, and excessive, but also calculated, even down to where and how and to what degree he had used his powers. Had it not been rather dangerous to light up a space replete with gunpowder? Or is it so dangerous when we're only speaking of illusions? Carnage is carnage, in the end, and Chrome can only imagine that the fact she got out without being charred to death is a sign unto itself. Many enough had not been so fortunate, and, on that note, she does not bother to ask Hibari about the extent of his own kills. The very fact that she had time enough for a brief hand of poker before he had caught up with her must speak to the extent of the ambush he had been dealing with -- because this is after all Hibari, and for him to have taken more than a few seconds to deal with the situation --

\-- well.

Chrome could ask him about details, names, Families. They are becoming familiar in her mouth, now. Maps of meaning. She could ask about their allies. Their enemies. The prospective future of affiliations, and who needs to rebuild, and who will not be rebuilding at any time in the near future, and what will Vongola say, do you suppose, and how much do the others know yet, and how are their missions. She could ask. But she does not. Not now.

There is, however, one question remaining which she wants to know.

"What happened to it?"

 _It_ being their target.

Was it returned to the Moretti Family? Has it already been replicated? She needs to know.

Hibari stops walking. Turns.

"I confiscated it."

She blinks. "You... you can do that?"

He closes his eyes for a moment, and Chrome remembers that, yes, Hibari can do that.

Because who is going to stop him. But.

"Why?"

"I despise illusions," he answers, which adds to the confusion, except: "But that man is for me to bite to death."

For the first time since her separation on that night, Chrome smiles. She steps forward, closer than she would normally dare.

"Your displeasure in his absence is pointless. He'll return, of course," Hibari continues. "Like a cockroach."

"Another small animal?"

He pulls her closer by her good arm, abruptly, and her feet catch in the soft mulch of ground as their faces near. She exhales for an uncertain half-minute before deciding and closing the distance, offering her lips (because Chrome would never, could never presume to claim without warning), and she is almost surprised when he accepts. It's clumsy, and they, actually both, are obviously amateur, and unused to the other, but he is warm, his body not so bruising as she has ever imagined. His eyes are, if not kind (save towards little creatures), then coolly intense, rather smoky, the gaze of a stone firmament, unyielding in strength, but not judging, no, and she does not bow, but rather, with heightened boldness, reaches behind to touch his neck, which is warm, to pull him near.

As on a darkling plain, they tread where the river runs, on until the hour comes for departure. In all the wide world, the sea of faith flows in spite of the enclosure of the shores, and one way or another, each will find one another again.


End file.
